The greatest treasure, that Dad left behind is his memory. The memory of him gets rewound every time I look at something he loved, he  touched or he owned. His collection of books and pamphlets, his newspaper cuttings, preserved rare magazines, and most importantly his hand-written  notes and his small diaries with ‘naats’ , ‘manqabats’, couplets from Iqbal and Rumi and many beautiful quotes are my precious assets. The mornings of Downtown Srinagar were different-they still are, I believe. The air reverberates with the echoing sound of mosques, some calling out the Lord with humility and some passionately building up the stamina to engage in the melody of Durood u Salaam to Prophet Muhammad (peace upon him). Kashmiri couplets of longing, love, and a desire to be under his (peace upon him) banner, blend immiscibly with Durood. The storms are created within desperate hearts, uneasy minds sail to peace and springs erupt from the turbulent eyes. I have grown up with this all when naats, hymns and bhajans coalesced in the air and played softly on our eardrums, not creating noise, but an aura of spiritual awakening and bliss..

We would wake up to these unique mornings where prayers of thankfulness and repentance directed towards Heavens blended with poetic cries of love and longing directed towards Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him). I do not remember when I learnt to wake up early, but I remember waking up to the aura of Dua-e-Ṣsubuḥ—its prayers, its poetry, and its yearning filling the........

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